CIVITAS: An International Civic Education Exchange

The CIVITAS Exchange is a cooperative project of a consortium of civic education organizations in the United States and other participating nations. Bowling Green State University’s leads a partnership of the Kentucky Administrative Office of the Courts, Alabama Center for Civic Education, Center for Citizenship Education (Poland), All-Ukrainian Association of Teachers of Social Studies and Civic Education (Ukraine) and the KZN Center for Civic Education (South Africa). Participants sponsor seminars and exchanges of delegations of educators, scholars, and officials, and jointly adapt and develop curricular materials. The primary purpose of the project is to exchange ideas and experiences leading toward the goal of developing civic competence and responsibility among youth in emerging and established democracies.

Each year this project conducts educator exchanges from Poland, South Africa and Ukraine with their counterparts in the United States. The exchanges are used to further partnership goals including curriculum development, teacher education and democratic school reform. Each partnership has established areas for focus of their annual exchange activities:

2004-05 Activities

Objective #1: Exchange of educators and educational gatekeepers from all sites

Objective #2: Conduct Project Citizen in Poland, South Africa and Ukraine

Objective #3: Conduct International Project Citizen activities

Objective #4: Run pilot of on-line course “Democracy Connected to the World”

Objective #5: Conduct research and share materials related to democratic school reform

Objective #6: Conduct exchange of preservice teachers to “Expedition Inside Culture”

Objective #7: Develop specifications for online methods course for use by BGSU and South Africa sites

Objective #8: Develop Specifications for research project on: “Teaching for Democracy”

Objective #9: Develop specifications for online methods course for use by BGSU and Ukrainian sites

Objective #10: Conduct research project on: “Teaching for Democracy” in Ukraine

Objective #11: Integration of Civic Education in the study of Economics for Ukraine

Partnerships

Ohio-Poland Partnership
Civic education in pre-service teacher education and democratic school reform

Ohio-Alabama-Ukraine Partnership
Curriculum development for integrating civic education in the content areas of the social studies

Ohio-Kentucky-South Africa Partnership
Developing social action and other civic education projects for student populations